The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

In present-day Kabul, Rahima lives with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, so she and her sisters can rarely attend school or leave the house. Her family turns to the ancient custom of bacha posh, dressing Rahima as a boy so she can move freely, work, and chaperone her sisters, until she reaches marriageable age and is married off into a warlord's household. A century earlier, her great-great-grandmother Shekiba, orphaned by an epidemic and disfigured by a childhood burn, survived by living as a man and serving in a king's harem guard. The novel crisscrosses between the two women, separated by a hundred years but bound by the same courage and the same fight to control their own fate.